Time for a change of scenery

After nearly two months in Chile and Argentina we had become quite accustomed to the South American way of life, but now it was time to adapt to the African way of life! 

We started with a one night layover in Johannesburg before boarding a flight to Mozambique. Our flight had recently been changed from a direct flight to Inhambane to a flight via the country's capital Maputo. This was not a problem until we tried to check in an discovered that whilst we had been transferred in to the new flight no tickets had been issued. After going backwards and forwards for nearly an hour we managed to check in. We also formed a bond with the 7 other passengers who were having similar issues!

We were going to Mozambique to visit my wonderful friend Caty Batten who had been living in Tofo Beach since the previous October and volunteering for the  Marine Megafauna Foundation. Tofo has a unique selection of sea life, in particular lots of manta rays and whale sharks. The area is particularly popular with divers.

Caty, me and Nick in the Mozambique sunshine

We arrived at Inhambane airpor which dates back to the 1940s and not much has changed since then. The check in desk, departure gate, arrivals, luggage collection and airport bar were all within 10 metres of each other, so it was a speedy arrival process. We had been warned there was no cash machine/ATM at the airport.

Inhambane airport

We were met by Caty, her friend Charlotte and their favourite local driver JC. After a quick stop at the petrol station, which has an ATM, we dropped our luggage at Caty's accommodation in Tofo Beach and then headed off to the Barra, the next cove along where we would stay for the first two nights in a house on stilts right on the beach. 

Our home at Barra 

Barra is a beautiful beach with golden sands and a sweeping bay. The beaches were empty apart from the odd tourist and boys selling bracelets. 

The beautiful & empty beach

We were just a short walk from the sea and an even shorter walk from Chill Bar which provided delicious food, cocktails and beers. We were learnt about the Mozambique laid back approach to service and the best thing to do was order food, go for a swim in the sea, dry off and come back just in time for the food to arrive. This was the pattern of our stay in Barra. The temperature and humidity didn't make us want to be any more active than that. We did venture to the Green Turtle restaurant at the other end of the bay one night. It is a french restaurant with very French owners and a chef who had (allegedly) received a Michelin star. We had planned to walk to the restaurant but we had been distracted by watching the sunset so negotiations were started and a truck appeared from somewhere on the beachfront to drive us to the restaurant - five (we were being accompanied by three Danish tourists who Caty and her friends had got to know) of us in the open back and two  front. The food was delicious and served in a beachfront bungalow. A highlight was a beautiful moonlit beach walk, with crabs scuttling out of our way as we walked, back to our house. 

Sunset at Barra

Moonlit walk home

After two nights in Barra we headed to Tofo Beach in time to watch a live rock band called On the Way that was visiting from Maputo in one of the local bars. By the end of the night the dance floor was quite lively!

  On the Way just warming up

 Our home in Tofo

The view from the deck

The main row of bars and restaurants in the centre of Tofo

Over the next few days we maintained the chilled pace of life as we explored Tofo, which is not much bigger than a village. Having been so busy in Patagonia, I confess we were a bit lazy whilst Caty was an excellent hostess cooking for us and making plans. Highlights included a surf lesson, during which we both just about managed to stand up (after our lesson we watched our teacher ride the waves whilst doing a headstand on his surfboard); a film night in the communal kitchen with a projector and a sheet hanging from one of the rafters; a public talk on manta rays given by one of Caty's colleagues - did you know that manta rays are graceful and intelligent and can grown up to 7 metres?!; sampling the local restaurants including excellent pizza from Brancas; and a beautiful sunset dhow (sailboat) ride down the estuary with a walk on a tiny sandy island. 

All too soon it was time to head back to the airport and start the next part of our adventure. However, we left feeling refreshed and with a new found respect for ocean megafauna. Thank you Caty, and your friends and colleagues, for the wonderful hospitality! 

- Jess 

The End of the World

After our penguin experience in Punta Arenas, it was finally time for our last stop on our South American adventure:  Ushuaia. Located on the island of Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina, it's considered the end of the world city (only because the Chilean town across the beagle channel from it doesn't have enough residents to be a "city").  It took us a 12 hour bus ride to get there including a ferry crossing. The shocking thing was that this was the first bus that arrived on time!!!

The end of the world is not flat after all!

Upon arrival, we were met with all the sights you'd expect to see in a place called the end of the world: large cruise ships and a Hard Rock Cafe. We got into our Airbnb only to find out that our host was having water issues and that we had no hot water. We ended up having to shower in our host's place (it was just behind ours). That certainly made for an interesting experience!

Heading out with the cruise ships blocking a good view of Ushuaia

By the time we arrived in Ushuaia, both of us were nursing some small colds that we had picked up due to the ever changing Patagonian weather. This lead to a lighter schedule of activities than we might have otherwise planned. The highlight of our time here was our cruise on the Beagle Channel. This is the channel that is the absolute southern border of Argentina with only 2 islands belonging to Chile to the south. This is Argentina's main shipping path to connect the Atlantic and Pacific ocean. There were many different options of what kind of boats to take, from large catamaran's that herded the cruise ship takers (I'm not sure what they like to call themselves) around like cattle to small 6 person cruises where you hoped you had calm waters. We finally settled on the Patagonian Adventure Explorer. It was a relatively smaller boat, but large enough to handle the weather and small enough to feel personal. 

Happy Cruisers

Our first stop was bird island. This island was the home to an absurd amount of imperial cormorants (or shags). They feed off the abundant marine wildlife and build their nests from kelp and their own poop. Eventually they overrun their current island with their own poop and will move to a different island in the channel, only to do the same thing to it. Eventually they'll cycle back through their previous islands after a couple years away (and presumably a deep clean from mother nature).

The birds were everywhere

After bird island, we headed out to check out the old lighthouse. It was constructed in the early 1900's as there are some very dangerous shallows in the channel. The last major shipwreck here was in the 1930's. It was a cruise ship and while everyone was rescued, the population on the cruise ship was more than double that of Ushuaia at the time so they had no room to house the people. They had to use the jail to accommodate people and it took three months to get everyone from the ship out of town. 

Despite the moody weather, the cruise offered spectacular scenery

The other fact we learned about the lighthouse was in the color scheme. The lighthouses are either red/white/red or white/red/white. Depending on the color scheme, it told you (as a captain) if the danger was to the west or east. This island also happened to be home to a large colony of sea lions as well.

I guess it was nap time when we got there.

After the lighthouse, we stopped off at an island that gave great views back into the city and also housed some of the early native settlements. To celebrate a successful voyage (a 3 hour tour some might say), we all toasted with coffee liquor, made by the first mate on the ship. It wasn't half bad. It was like a Bailey's without the cream. The overall scenery was beautiful as the snow capped mountains just rolled off right into the water.

The Andes rolling off into the channel with Ushuaia along the shore

We also had some amazing food in Ushuaia. We found a great pizza and empanada place the first night which really hit the spot after the bus ride. We also had a delicious dinner out at Paso Garibaldi where the crab ceviche was fantastic as well as the local caught trout and steak. While there were no breweries visited, we were able to sample the local brews from both Cape Horn and Beagle brewing.

Paso Garibaldi. Highly recommended!

In our final day/night in Ushuaia and to celebrate the end of our eight weeks in South America, we decided to treat ourselves to a night in the Los Cauquenes resort and spa.  Not only are there cruise ships and Hard Rock Cafes at the end of the world but also 5 star resorts!! Our room had an amazing view of the channel and we had excellent massages to loosen up all those muscles we had used during all our Patagonian hiking! We finished off with a great dinner a bottle of Petit Caro, which we had sampled much earlier in our trip in Mendoza!

A room with a view

After a great night's rest, it was time to head back to Buenos Aires for one evening before catching our flights over to South Africa to begin our next leg!

-nick

P-P-P-Pick up a penguin*

*For non British readers the title is a reference to adverts for a chocolate biscuit.

By now we were quite familiar with how bus stations and buses worked and we had an easy morning's journey to Punta Arenas. It is a town with a large port used by cruise ships and Antarctic expeditions. The main square had a variety of architectural styles as a result of the influx of Europeans in the late 1800s following the gold rush and sheep farming boom. 

Some of the more interesting buildings around the square

Our first task on arrival (once we had found where we were staying) was to try and book a trip for the next day to Magdalena Island which is home to over 100,000 penguins. The penguins arrive in December to mate and lay their eggs and stay for a few months until the adolescent penguins have shed their fluffy feathers. We had been contemplating a trip to see penguins at some stage, but I had just read The Penguin Lessons (a lovely non-fiction book about a penguin rescued by an English school teacher working in Buenos Aires in the 1970s, I recommend it to anyone looking for an easy read) and had developed a new found interest in penguins! Mission accomplished we headed to the supermarket to buy our supplies for the next couple of days. 

During our time in Argentina we'd enjoyed drinking beer from Austral, a Punta Arenas brewery dating back to 1896, and we had organised a tour for the next day. With a day of penguins and beer to look forward to we had a quiet afternoon doing chores (laundry), trip admin and playing yahtzee. 

The next day we were up early and at our designated collection point for 6.30am with about 40 other tourists. We were driven to a small dock just outside of Punta Arenas. Most of the drive was along a road adjacent to the water and we caught a brief glimpse of two dolphins swimming along the shore line. We all filed into a yellow boat that was deceptively spacious inside. We were lucky that, for Patagonia, there wasn't much wind and the water was quite calm. 

On arrival to the small island there were penguins everywhere! I was surprised by how noisy they were! They look directly up to the sky, puff their chests out and honk veraciously! As tourists we had a circular path roped out around the island and had been warned to stay at least a metre away from the penguins. The penguins ignored the tourists and walked across the path as they pleased. We could have spent hours watching the penguins interact with each other, waddle around the island, climb in and out of their burrows and ducking and diving in the waves. 

Thousands of penguins means hundreds of photos, here are just a few! 

Penguins contemplating a swim.

There were penguins everywhere!

We had about an hour on the island and then everyone got back on board the boat. The sea was deemed calm enough by the captain to head to a nearby island which housed a number of sea lions. Unfortunately we didn't get as close to this islands, we could just see the sea lions by sitting on top of the boat.  I was surprised by how big the sea lions were. It was then time for the return journey where most passengers (including us) had a quick nap as a result of the early start and the sea air. 

After a quick trip back to our apartment for lunch we were off to the brewery, but then disaster struck! The tour was cancelled due to unplanned repair work. A little disheartened we walked back into town to find an establishment selling Austral on tap. We finally found a locals bar almost opposite our apartment serving Austral's El Calafate on tap and we managed to use up some of our Chilean Peso (Punta Arenas would be our last Chilean stop) sampling a pint or two! 

-Jess